How To Take Responsibility and Be Accountable For Your Life Choices
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Every potential change comes with its own challenges.
You need to be certain that the tradeoff you are making is a net positive, that the pros and cons of the new outweigh those of the old. You have to factor in both the advantages of what you are trying to gain, and the disadvantages of anything you may lose or need to give up in order to do so.
It is easy to see what you don't like about yourself and your life, to list the things you wish you had or the ways you wish things were different. Often this can easily overshadow the things we already have and the experiences that have brought us to this point in our lives and made us who we are today. Thinking back on everything we lost or missed out on, remembering the bad things that have happened to us and wishing they hadn’t… It is important to realise that this, too, is a mindset that can be detrimental to our progress.
Focusing on what we are lacking instead of what we should be thankful for can lead to feelings of frustration and anxiety when we aren't making the kind of progress that we'd like to or think we should be. Regretting or resenting the events of the past is counterproductive, as they cannot be changed, and it only serves to make you bitter and dissatisfied with your accomplishments.
You need to practice a mindset of abundance versus one of scarcity.
Look at yourself in the mirror and try to ignore the things that you dislike or are unhappy with. Don’t point out flaws and imperfections. Instead, focus on something that you appreciate or that you are proud of. Now do the same with the rest of your life.
Even if you feel as though it’s bleak and dreary, or dark and oppressive, try to find the flecks of colour that make you happy, the motes of light that give you hope and help you through your worst days. No matter how small they are, they are there. Your parents who raised you. The school that taught you to read and write. Friends you can always talk to and have fun with, even if they come and go or aren’t always a good influence. The warm bed you sleep in, the roof over your head, the food in your stomach.
These are all basic things, and you might have even more to express thanks for, like a stable job, a family or pets, free time and money for hobbies, transport and the freedom to go anywhere. Not everyone has the same privileges. You may not recognize them at first, but everyone has something they can be grateful for, even if it’s the simple blessing of being alive and having the opportunity to experience the world around you.
Nothing is permanent, good or bad.
The hard times are like storms, perilous and often terrifying, but they will eventually pass, and the sun will be warmer and the breeze fresher for the rain. They exist to help us grow by teaching us how to be better people, to be strong yet humble in the face of adversity and to never be complacent with what we have, because we never know when we might lose it. For that, we can also learn to be grateful for the hardship and pain, for letting us appreciate the joy and comfort in our daily lives.
Try to approach every facet of your life from the perspective of gathering fruit off a tree.
Don’t linger overlong on the ones that are yet unripe or already spoiled, or look too hard at each of the bruises. Accept that life is unpredictable and uncontrollable, just like the weather. It can often be rough with you, and because of that you will never come out on the other side unscarred. So don’t overlook a perfectly fresh, sweet fruit because of a few unsightly blemishes on the surface.
A life that’s lived with hesitation and restriction is no life at all. When every moment is recorded for posterity, you focus on superficial things and don’t allow yourself to enjoy an otherwise happy memory. A photo of you at the beach shouldn’t be met with cringe thoughts of, “I looked fat in that swimsuit.” You should remember the warmth of the sun on your skin and the sand between your toes. The pain of a jellyfish sting will always be forefront in your mind, but you should recognize it for what it is – a lesson learned – and not let it spoil the rest.
Fruit is made to be eaten, not displayed, and your life is made to be lived and enjoyed, eagerly and messily, not to be showcased for the world to be envious of.
This is what makes social media dangerous. You look at your friends and their seemingly perfect lives, their celebrations of success and their plentiful luxuries, and you compare yourself to them. Everyone else is off losing weight and looking fabulous, being promoted at their high paying jobs, getting married and having babies. The next thing you know, you’re feeling sorry for yourself. If only you could be like those people, who seem to have everything they ever wanted and more.
What you fail to realise is that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok uploads have all been deliberately curated to only show the highlights of others’ lives. You don’t see any of the hardships they’ve endured and the struggles they had to go through to get to where they are, or any of the challenges they continue to face, because most people don’t advertise their problems. People want to feel good about themselves, so they will paint over the ugly parts of their lives to create this beautiful idealised picture of what they feel it should be.
Don’t fall into that trap. Society is obsessed with the concept of perfection, confusing it with true happiness. The consumerist media is always pushing this unrealistic standard for what your body, your partner, your home and your life should look like to be considered “perfect” and therefore “happy”. It all comes down to what you have and don’t have. Don’t be fooled by the idealistic lifestyle that social media sells you, because it is as toxically unrealistic as photoshopped pictures of celebrities in beauty magazines and adverts for fast food restaurants. The truth is often very underwhelming by comparison.
Instead of comparing yourself to others, choose to set your own standards for what you want your life to look like. Give yourself permission to love even the broken and flawed parts of you, the unhappy or undesirable things, and accept them for what they are, not for what you wish they were.
This is your life. It is the only one you have. Embrace it, and learn to not only appreciate the sunshine, but to dance in the rain.
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How To Take Responsibility and Be Accountable For Your Life Choices
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The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
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It’s the way of life. No matter how well things are going for you right now, you know that eventually bad things are going to happen. You know that despite your best intentions, no matter how hard you try, inevitably somewhere along the line you are going to end up getting hurt. And when you do, the first thing you’re going to look for is a reason why.
You are going to look for something – or someone – to blame.
This is an instinctive self-defence mechanism. It’s only natural to want to protect ourselves from negative feelings or experiences, especially when we’re working so hard to stay positive in a world where it seems like everything’s falling apart and there’s disaster around every corner.
So when faced with a problem that is going to be uncomfortable or inconvenient to have to deal with, we instead do everything we can to avoid it altogether. Even if we have to make it someone else’s problem instead.
It’s far easier to just let somebody else take responsibility. When you’re presented with an opportunity to acknowledge your own mistakes and failures, learn from them, apologise for your transgressions and try to improve, why would you go to all of that trouble when you could choose to do nothing and let another person take the fall instead?
Having a scapegoat lets you take the burden and the attention off of yourself. If you can shift the blame onto someone else, then you don’t have to face the consequences of your actions, and better yet, you don’t have to take ownership and hold yourself accountable for the part you played in causing the problem. You don’t have to be the one who has to try and fix it, either.
You spend a lot of your precious time and energy trying to improve your circumstances so that you can be happy, and it’s reasonable to expect a return on that investment. It’s disappointing when you’re hindered by a mistake or failure. It’s not always easy to recover from a loss, either, especially a significant one. Thus it can be devastating to have to admit when that mistake was your own, because you’ll have to deal with the regret the entire time you’re trying to get back to the point you were at before.
Even when you know it was out of your hands and you didn’t have any control over the outcome, when you know that whatever happened was a freak accident or just plain bad luck, you still feel like someone must have played a part in it, or there must have been some reason behind it. You need a way to direct your frustrations elsewhere so that you feel better about the situation, an excuse for why you have to struggle… but there just isn’t one.
You will eventually come to the conclusion that life isn’t fair. This is perhaps the single most important thing we have to accept about existing: we can’t expect to always be rewarded for our efforts, or for those who have wronged us to get what they deserve. Life gives and life takes away, and not necessarily in equal measure.
It’s easy to start becoming nihilistic, to let yourself fall into a mindset that bad things always happen to you. Thinking that the world is out to get you, or that you are being punished for something by God or the universe. Believing that you are destined to be miserable because that’s all that life has to offer. None of these thoughts are in any way productive. You’re not only making yourself hopelessly depressed, but you are giving up all accountability for your situation, choosing to sit around helplessly waiting for someone to come save you.
Nobody will, because nobody can. You are the only one with the power to do that.
Nobody will, because nobody can. You are the only one with the power to do that.
Life is not something you can control, nor are other people. They fall into the category of things you cannot change, and therefore you need to find a way to work around them and be flexible enough to adapt to the changes that they bring. Bad things will always happen, often at the worst possible times, but whether or not you suffer because of them is dependant on your mindset – whether you decide to play the victim, or become the brave hero and face them head-on.
Just as dragons are there to be slain, problems exist to be dealt with. They are life’s way of teaching us important lessons so that we can grow and become better people. If you keep avoiding them or making other people deal with them for you, it will only perpetuate the problem because you aren’t identifying the true cause. You will keep encountering the same challenge over and over again in different ways until you’ve learned how to overcome and move past it.
Don’t let other people influence the way you live, and don’t let the bad things stand in the way of finding the good. Everything in the world is temporary… including you. Take ownership of the precious little life you’ve been given, and instead of waiting for it to happen, be responsible for creating your own happiness. You have to take the chance now, because you won’t get an opportunity like this ever again.
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How To Take Responsibility and Be Accountable For Your Life Choices
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Are you happy?
You’ve probably asked yourself this question before. In fact, there probably isn’t a single person who has ever lived who hasn’t had this very thought at some point. Happiness is this vague, abstract concept, and yet we place so much emphasis on achieving it as human beings. It is the single most important factor by which we measure our success in life, and our willingness to persevere through hardship.
But what is “happiness”?
Have you ever stopped to consider what that word even means?
The pure dictionary definition of happiness is “a state of being, of experiencing good fortune, pleasure, contentment, and joy.”
When you consider it this way, being happy is at least partly outside of our own control. Luck is random, chaotic by its very nature. It’s not something that can be predicted or fully understood. It can be influenced by tipping the odds in our favour, but ultimately we can never rely on it for positive outcomes.
Bad things will always happen. It’s inevitable. So it’s all too easy to slip into a pessimistic mindset of, “even if I’m happy now, it’s only a matter of time before something ruins it.” You may even give in to the nihilistic doom and gloom of, “if I’m going to be dealt a losing hand no matter what, why should I bother playing at all?”
Even when the world is falling apart around you, there is always some way of enjoying yourself, though.
Pleasure is an easy thing to recognize and to know how to look for, and it’s even easier to come by. Hedonistic creatures that we are, our society has been largely built around providing for our every need, including a means to scratch every conceivable itch. They say money can’t buy happiness, but dopamine has become a commodity like everything else.
Unfortunately, with how capitalism works, this also means that how you get your fix generally isn’t going to be good for you…
Drugs, alcohol and gambling are addictive, as we all know, but these are not the only substances and behaviours people fall back on to make themselves feel happy. Junk food, sex and pornography, video games, impulse shopping and even exercise can all be taken to the extreme in pursuit of that feel-good chemical.
Though convenient and reliable, every single one of these highs is short-lived, while the side-effects are long-term and can be highly detrimental. Addiction alters a person’s brain function, increasing compulsion while simultaneously weakening self-control, which leads to dependence.
Psychological dependence also leads to horrible withdrawal symptoms like anxiety and anhedonia (reduced motivation and the inability to experience pleasure from either anticipation or reward), which are not easily overcome and only serve to create a perpetual cycle of needing more hits of instant gratification to feel happy. It will never be enough.
Instead of relying on temporary fixes to elevate our moods when we’re feeling sad, bored or lonely, we should be seeking a more long-term state of happiness. We need to find contentment and emotional stability.
Feeling content and satisfied is easier said than done, however.
You cannot be truly content if you are missing something, whether you are aware of it or know what that thing is or not. It could be a need for physical or mental stimulation, but personal security (in regards to safety, health or finances) as well as interpersonal relationships (familial bonds, romantic love and social acceptance), are also things every human being requires to be in a state of equilibrium. If you are lacking any of these things, it becomes difficult to even function optimally in your daily life.
Not everyone is privileged enough to have all of these things, let alone in the kind of abundance needed to truly feel secure and comfortable. For many of us, we are still trying to fill in the blanks, and to make the best of what we have at our disposal. Does this then automatically preclude our contentment, or prevent us ever reaching a state of true happiness?
Absolutely not.
In order to find happiness, we must first be satisfied with what we have. This not only means to have everything we need, but to recognise and appreciate what we’ve already achieved and the blessings we have been given in life.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have as much as the next person, or if you’re struggling to make ends meet. As long as you have a sense of belonging, of gratitude, and a sense that you are doing the right thing and following the right path, you can find a measure of satisfaction with where you are in your life.
On the other hand, if you are one of the lucky few who has everything you could possibly need to survive in this world, and the connections with others to help and support you through whatever life throws at you, then you already have a lot to be grateful for. You may even consider yourself happy… but happiness doesn’t end with prosperity and thankfulness. In the same way that the dopamine rush from instant gratification is temporary, so too is the feeling of contentment.
The very definition of satisfaction is “not wanting more or anything else.”
We as a species are designed for adaptation and growth, wired to constantly seek out progress and innovation. The next step up the ladder, the next big thing, the next new experience. As individuals we strive for improvement and thrive on change. Therefore, the very concept of satisfaction goes completely against our intrinsic nature as human beings, because we will always want more.
This brings us to the concept of purpose, and the ultimate goal of self-actualization.
Imposing ideals and lofty aspirations, you might think. You may look at those words and baulk, not even knowing where to start or how to proceed. Perhaps you imagine that it’s impossible to know one’s purpose or achieve your “best self”, or that the concept doesn’t really exist anywhere except on paper.
In Japanese culture, there exists a concept known as “ikigai,” or “a reason for being.”
It shares similarities to the French terms “raison d'être” and “joie de vivre,” in that it expresses the need for both living a life that has meaning, and enjoying one’s life to the fullest.
The thought behind ikigai is that every individual has a unique purpose, and that purpose can be found at the intersection between the things you love, the things you are good at, and the things the world needs. If you can find something that fits into all three categories, then you have found your own personal ikigai.
Western ideology has injected a fourth criteria into this mix, of “things that you can be paid for”, but this is not core to the idea of ikigai. The concept is focused more on finding meaning in life through devotion to the things you enjoy, especially if doing such activities has the potential to do good for others in the process.
At the heart of ikigai is the goal of striving to better oneself every day, to develop your skills and constantly work towards excellence. Doing something deliberate, worthwhile and meaningful, especially when you are challenging yourself to improve on your previous accomplishments, inevitably creates a cycle of constant growth and development. This in turn leads to a lasting sense of pride, happiness and fulfilment.
Ikigai also emphasises living in the moment and appreciating the little things. From rain pattering on your window as you bundle up with a warm cup of coffee in your hands, to the smell of fresh cut grass as you lie and watch the sunlight glitter off the dewdrops. It is to live with all five senses open and inviting the sensations of the world around you, and to appreciate life itself.
Even pain and heartache are things which ikigai teaches us to embrace, because they are a part of the human experience. There would be no joy without sorrow. We can only accept them for what they are, respect them, take in the good things while we can and let the bad ones pass in their own time. Likewise, it teaches us that true beauty lies in the broken, the imperfect, the ephemeral.
Life is fleeting, and the only time we truly have is now, in this moment. If you can appreciate all the fragile moments of joy and wonder in the world around you while forgetting about your own struggles and misfortune, and focus your efforts on consistently making an improvement every single day, then by all accounts you will have found inner peace and what could be considered true happiness.
In the end, happiness is not a destination we can plot a course to, arrive at and stay in forever. Happiness is an endless journey on a road to nowhere, and it lies in all the little steps we take along the way, in exploring ourselves and becoming who we are meant to be. All you need is an open mind, an open heart, to work hard and to have faith in the process, and you will never lose your way.
What is happiness?
It’s not luck, because luck is unreliable.
It’s not pleasure, because pleasure is fleeting.
It’s not contentment, because we can never be satisfied.
It’s the pursuit of your higher purpose and self-actualization.
Happiness is not a final destination.
It is an endless journey.
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How To Take Responsibility and Be Accountable For Your Life Choices
It’s the way of life.
No matter how well things are going for you right now, you know that eventually bad things are going to happen. You know that despite your best intentions, no matter how hard you try, inevitably somewhere along the line you’re going to end up getting hurt.
And when you do, the first thing you’re going to look for is a reason why.
You are going to look for something – or someone – to blame.
This is an instinctive self-defence mechanism. It’s only natural to want to protect ourselves from negative feelings or experiences, especially when we’re working so hard to stay positive in a world where it seems like everything’s falling apart and there’s disaster around every corner.
So when faced with a problem that is going to be uncomfortable or inconvenient to have to deal with, we instead do everything we can to avoid it altogether. Even if we have to make it someone else’s problem instead.
Scapegoat Theory
It’s far easier to just let somebody else take responsibility.
When you’re presented with an opportunity to acknowledge your own mistakes and failures, learn from them, apologise and try to improve, why would you go to all of that trouble when you could choose to do nothing and let another person take the fall instead?
Having a scapegoat lets you take the burden and the attention off of yourself. If you can shift the blame onto someone else, then you don’t have to face the consequences of your actions, and better yet, you don’t have to take ownership and hold yourself accountable.
You don’t have to be the one who has to try and fix it, either.
But when the problem is with your own life, that approach isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Of course, other people are involved in your life whether you like it or not, and they will always have an impact on it one way or another.
Your family, friends and colleagues may support you and help you through hardship, or they may inadvertently get you tangled up in their own problems and cause you even more stress than you had before.
They may be responsible for adding to the joy and heartache in it, but they are not responsible for your life. It’s yours, and yours alone. No one else can make your decisions for you. They don’t have any control over you – not unless you decide to give it to them.
If you do, and they proceed to trample all over your carefully laid plans, destroy the things you’ve worked so hard to create for yourself, and thoroughly make a mess of your life for you… well, then there’s nothing you can do about it.
You can’t even be upset. You’d probably like to point fingers at the ones who did the damage, but the truth is, the only one you have to blame is yourself. It’s not their fault you made a bad decision.
You spend a lot of your precious time and energy trying to improve your circumstances so that you can be happy, and it’s reasonable to expect a return on that investment.
It’s disappointing when you’re hindered by a mistake or failure. It’s not always easy to recover from a loss, either, especially a significant one. Thus it can be devastating to have to admit when that mistake was your own, because you’ll have to deal with the regret the entire time you’re trying to get back to the point you were at before.
Even when you know it was out of your hands and you didn’t have any control over the outcome, when you know that whatever happened was a freak accident or just plain bad luck, you still feel like someone must have played a part in it, or there must have been some reason behind it.
You need a way to direct your frustrations elsewhere so that you feel better about the situation, an excuse for why you have to struggle… but there just isn’t one.
Playing the Victim
You will eventually come to the conclusion that life isn’t fair.
This is perhaps the single most important thing we have to accept about existing: we can’t expect to always be rewarded for our efforts, or for those who have wronged us to get what they deserve. Life gives and life takes away, and not necessarily in equal measure.
It’s easy to start becoming nihilistic, to let yourself fall into a mindset that bad things always happen to you. Thinking that the world is out to get you, or that you are being punished for something by God or the universe. Believing that you are destined to be miserable because that’s all that life has to offer.
None of these thoughts are in any way productive. You’re not only making yourself hopelessly depressed, but you are giving up all accountability for your situation, choosing to sit around helplessly waiting for someone to come save you.
Nobody will, because nobody can. You are the only one with the power to do that.
Choose To Be Happy
You need to be your own knight in shining armour.
Life is not something you can control, nor are other people. They fall into the category of things you cannot change, and therefore you need to find a way to work around them and be flexible enough to adapt to the changes that they bring.
Bad things will always happen, often at the worst possible times, but whether or not you suffer because of them is dependent on your mindset – whether you decide to play the victim, or become the brave hero and face them head-on.
Just as dragons are there to be slain, problems exist to be dealt with.
They are life’s way of teaching us important lessons so that we can grow and become better people. If you keep avoiding them or making other people deal with them for you, it will only perpetuate the problem because you aren’t identifying the true cause.
You will keep encountering the same challenge over and over again in different ways until you’ve learned how to overcome and move past it.
Don’t let other people influence the way you live, and don’t let the bad things stand in the way of finding the good. Take ownership of the precious little life you’ve been given, and instead of waiting for it to happen, be responsible for creating your own happiness.
You have to take the chance now, because you won’t get an opportunity like this ever again.
Everything in the world is temporary… including you.You have to take the chance now, because you won’t get an opportunity like this ever again.
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Hello, Eilene here
When I moved to the UAE more than 15 years ago, I never imagined that I would fall in love and get married here. Nor did I think that I would be living in such a beautiful home with my husband, daughter and two french bulldogs.
I am so grateful for the life that I have today. Every day, I am surrounded by stunning landscapes and inspiring people who have helped me build a successful career. My husband and I also manage our own foundation which helps children and families in underdeveloped countries with sustainable educational and healthcare programs.
I truly believe that we create our own reality, and that if we have a positive mindset and go-getter attitude, anything is possible.
From a dark and desperate place to the light of hope, I found my calling in life. With passion for helping others burning within me like never before – driven by this deep innate desire – I learned how to nourish myself so that it would fuel even more positivity into what has become known as "The New Me."
And I am now on a mission to help WOMEN transform into newer, shinier versions of themselves. Join me today and let’s change your life forever, together!
